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I really hate censorship from institutions and providers where it would be better if they were naive and impartial. Essentially, if the behavior of one customer

I really hate censorship from institutions and providers where it would be better if they were naive and impartial. Essentially, if the behavior of one customer does not impact another customer (directly) then the service/business should stay out of the matter. Twitter and Facebook have to sell ads to make a profit which means keeping their platforms 'ad-friendly' and they are also designing everything about the site from the colors to the user experience. So it makes sense for them to moderate or even restrict content to even an arbitrary degree. However, dumb service providers like GoDaddy and AWS make a profit and are designed around providing (generic mostly) services. When they step in to moderate content beyond what is necessary for legal purposes, it really undermines the whole institution of free speech. I think that in the case of GoDaddy is especially worrisome since DNS ought to be a impartial service and not an adjudicator of morality. At least AWS is 99% commodity and not a top down institution like DNS. Personally, although I don't need to use it, I prefer nearlyfreespeech.net [1] for my domain name and minor hosting needs. Nearlyfreespech.net (NFSN) offers hosting/DNS for anything that is legal in the US (maybe some exceptions [2]). And NFSN offers no-frills DNS & hosting management as well as the best account security I have seen from any site. The prices are reasonable and very simple. [1] https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/help/abuse#offensive https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/help/abuse#offensive [2] Looks like the ToS includes any ToS that NFSN has to adhere to as well so it's possible that an upstream domain registrar could exert pressure on NFSN... not sure how likely that is. https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/help/abuse#offensive https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/help/abuse#offensive

klodolph 6y ago
Presumably this is a PR move for GoDaddy. If you are doing business with anybody you are political and making political decisions. Profit and politics are intimately connected, it’s just a bit more obvious in the ad industry.
rcoveson 6y ago
> I really hate censorship from institutions and providers where it would be better if they were naive and impartial. Situations where the company doing the proactive banning is practically invisible are downright concerning. It's gotten to the point where B2B corporations go out of their way to signal their willingness to evict unsavory customers. It's like if not only Chick-fil-A, but companies like Sysco closed on Sundays to signal their devout Christianity. Nobody asked them to, and probably most people didn't think about whether or not they worked on Sundays at all. Chick-fil-A is like social media companies, who have their logo constantly in the public eye. Sysco is like domain registrars. Most people don't know they exist, and yet they go the extra mile (in this hypothetical) to show their devotion to the cause. If it gets as far as landlords, things are going to get really crazy really fast.

klodolph 6y ago

Presumably this is a PR move for GoDaddy. If you are doing business with anybody you are political and making political decisions. Profit and politics are intimately connected, it’s just a bit more obvious in the ad industry.

rcoveson 6y ago

> I really hate censorship from institutions and providers where it would be better if they were naive and impartial. Situations where the company doing the proactive banning is practically invisible are downright concerning. It's gotten to the point where B2B corporations go out of their way to signal their willingness to evict unsavory customers. It's like if not only Chick-fil-A, but companies like Sysco closed on Sundays to signal their devout Christianity. Nobody asked them to, and probably most people didn't think about whether or not they worked on Sundays at all. Chick-fil-A is like social media companies, who have their logo constantly in the public eye. Sysco is like domain registrars. Most people don't know they exist, and yet they go the extra mile (in this hypothetical) to show their devotion to the cause. If it gets as far as landlords, things are going to get really crazy really fast.